


Bad Things Happen

by IceQueen1



Category: Magnum P.I. (TV 2018)
Genre: Bad things happen bingo card, Claustrophobia, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Held Hostage, Locked in a Cage, POWs, Rick being a badass, Taliban - Freeform, Thomas Whump, Whump, Witholding medical help, Wound That Would Not Heal, collection, shot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2019-11-29 07:26:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18220046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IceQueen1/pseuds/IceQueen1
Summary: The collection of my Bad Things Happen Bingo card on Tumblr. Every chapter will be the fulfillment of a prompt/square. Parts may wind up incorporated into other, longer fics, depending on when they happen. Every chapter is a complete story though, so it's posted as a complete work despite me adding to it on a regular basis.Chapter 1: Wound that Would Not HealChapter 2: Locked in a cageChapter 3: Withholding Medical TreatmentChapter 4: Big Brother Instinct





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I should be in bed. It’s nearly 4AM. I live on a farm. I should just waive my right to sleep. But I finally worked out at least one fic from my bingo card. Takes place while they’re POW’s, after Magnum gets his wound cauterized and it gets infected. It started off as Accidentally Hurt By a Friend trope requested by @chrisii-the-random-whump-writer‘s, but I’m thinking it counts more as amell-fan's request of Wound That Would Not Heal. 
> 
> Trope: Wound That Would Not Heal

“ _Jesus_ , Nuzo…”

“I know, I know, I _know_ …” There was a heavy sigh of frustration somewhere to his left. “I’m out of gunpowder though, unless you have some spare bullets with you.”

Thomas couldn’t stop the quiet whine that made it past his lips.

No. Not again. Not again, not again notagainnotagain…

“Shh, shh…” someone rumbled from just above him. “You’re okay. We got you. Shh…”

It was supposed to be soothing. _It should have been soothing_. And for a moment, Thomas let the relief wash over him that yes, yes, he was okay.

Until something pressed down _hard_ on his lower stomach, and he shrieked, flinging himself to the opposite side despite the hands pressing down on him from every angle. The dull, persistent ache he’d been distantly aware of flared to hot, all-encompassing agony that swept up from his side and down to his toes as he tried to curl in on himself without touching it, swallowing back bile and trying desperately to breathe in through his nose to keep from throwing up because _Jesus_ he didn’t want to imagine how much _worse_ that would make it.

Dirt pressed against his cheek, he could taste it in his mouth mixing with the blood from a torn cheek, but it was so wonderfully, blissfully _cool_ against his scorched skin, he found himself pressing his face further into it, desperate to feel anything, _anything_ except the pain in his stomach.

 “ _Baa een dast nazaned!_ ” he protested. At least, he tried. He could imagine the words forming on his tongue, tried to get his mouth to move around the syllables to get it out, to tell them not to touch him, but it came out mangled even to his ears. Breathless and without sound, little more than harsh panting as he tried his best not to die. Not to move. Not to _think_. “ _Baa een dast nazaned_ … _baa een dast nazaned…”_

Hands tentatively touched his shoulder, cold against his skin even through his worn t-shirt. “Thomas, buddy, you have to let us take a look…”

He hunched his shoulders, pulling away as well he could from the unwanted touch. “ _Baa een dast nazaned.”_ He repeated it over and over and over as if it were a mantra to keep himself centered and aware as best he could.

Even if the last thing he wanted to be was _aware_.

“Do you know what he’s saying, Nuz?”

Thomas heard a rustle of fabric. “I know enough to get by, guys. This shit wasn’t covered in the DLI handbook.”

“Thomas. Buddy. You with us?”

Thomas didn’t move.

“He’s still conscious, right?” the same voice asked, suddenly sounding worried.

No. Worried wasn't the right word.

“ _Thomas_.”

His name was spoken so forcefully, he couldn’t help the flinch.

Panicked. _Panicked_ was the word.

Gentle hands touched his face, a calloused thumb swiping across his cheeks at a dampness he hadn’t realized was even there.

“Thomas Sullivan Magnum, I need you to listen to me. Okay? I don’t know how much you can hear, but…it’s bad, Thomas. It’s not healing the way it’s supposed to, and the infection is getting worse. Do you understand?”

Images flashed through his mind, unwanted and with such force, he flinched from them, twisting further into the ground, despite the hands on his face and now his shoulder trying to hold him still. Nuzo leaning over him, telling him ‘ _this is gonna hurt_ ’. The taste of pine against his tongue as he bit down with enough force to break the stick between his teeth. The smell of burnt flesh and the reek of burnt powder.

 _I’m gonna die here…I’m gonna die here…Imgonnadie_ ….

“You’re not going to die, Thomas. Do you understand me?” The once gentle hands gripped tighter against his face. “I’m not going to let you. Not happening. I didn’t let you die in Korea, I didn’t let you die in Coronado, and I am not gonna let you die now. Understand?”

No. Not really. Because it sure as shit felt like he was dying now. Static pushed in, threatening to drown everything else out until he heard a familiar voice.

“We need to get you on your back, though, so we can see. Can we move you?”

Magnum curled tighter on himself, despite the pull against his side, and he twisted his face away from the gentle hands.

No.

“ _Come **on**_ , Thomas!” someone snarled in frustration. “Just let us _try_ to help you, would you?”

“That’s not helping.”

“Neither is he!”

“Out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole…I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul.”

It was a deep, familiar rumble, quiet and low and soothing against the static in his head, like the comforting roll of the ocean tide against the sand.

“In the fell clutch of circumstance…”

Thomas could still hear other voices in the background, but they faded in and out against the tide of the ocean. The more he tried to concentrate on the others, the more distracting the ocean became.

“I have not winced nor cried aloud…”

There was… _something_ about that voice. It didn’t argue. It didn’t yell. It didn’t make him want to curl tighter in defense, desperate to protect himself.

The gentle hands were back, cradling his head in their palms as they lifted him from the dirt floor. He flinched away, or at least, _tried_ , but the rumble of the sea rolled over him.

“Under the bludgeonings of chance, my head is bloodied but unbowed.”

Someone pulled at his legs, cautiously straightening them out and Thomas couldn’t help the moan of pain as it pulled his wound tight against his skin.

“Shh…we got you, Thomas. It’s gonna be okay. TC?”

More hands, this time on his ankles.

No. _No no no nonononono_ ….

“Beyond this place of wrath and tears, looms but the Horror of the shade, and yet the menace of the years finds and will find me unafraid.”

He tried to pull his feet up, but the cautious grip tightened around his ankles, pinning them to the ground. He tried to throw himself sideways again, but this time, the hands that once held his face cradled between them pressed his shoulders down with bruising force and he couldn’t stop the desperate whine that escaped his lips.

Not again.

 _Not again_.

He pressed himself back, willing himself to disappear into the floor, trying to twist in their unrelenting grasp. The hands on his shoulders released him and for a moment, he was free but before he could pull himself upright, the hands were back, having caught his own and pressed down even harder this time.

 _“Nakhair. Nakhair, nakhair, nakhair…_ ” he pleaded desperately. _Don’t do this_.

For a moment, no one moved. No one made a sound. And for that brief moment, Thomas thought they’d listened.

Except they didn’t let up.

They didn’t let go.

“God, I hope you don’t remember this…”

And then the world was on fire. Agony ripped through him like a living, breathing _thing_ determined to swallow him whole. He bucked against the hands that held him down, but they kept him pinned to the dirt no matter how much he thrashed against them. He tried to twist away but the searing, pervasive _pain_ followed.

Someone was screaming, and he desperately tried to cover his ears to block it out, but his arms remained pinned across his chest.

It took longer than it should’ve to realize it wouldn’t have helped.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m _sorry_!”

“Hurry up!”

“I’m fucking _trying_!”

Something sharp pressed against his side, digging into the already damaged flesh like talons until Magnum felt something _give_ and he fell, panting heavily and pressed into the familiar presence behind him, the relief at having the object gone a blessed reprieve by comparison.

The familiar tang of copper and iron was replaced by the stench of something rotted and dying and he couldn’t help gagging as the smell hit him.

He wasn’t the only one.

“ _Je_ -sus,” someone swore, followed by muffled coughing. “No wonder he was getting worse.”

The stabbing pain was gone, reduced to a throbbing ache that still pulsed from his stomach to heart, but at least no one was digging around beneath his skin anymore.

“Yeah, well, this may be a short-lived victory if they don’t listen and bring us something to treat the infection.”

“They want us alive. Him most of all.”

“Nuz…TC…we gotta get him out of here. Or he’s not gonna make it.”

The words should’ve bothered him more than they did.

Except…

He knew they were right.

“They’re gonna go too far one day. I mean… _shit_. Just look at him. And he’s not gonna do himself any favors and lay low. That just ain’t in him.”

There was a stretch of silence, and Magnum felt himself start to drift. Every ounce of energy he had burned up in futile resistance, and now he couldn’t bring himself to move. His head pounded, and his side throbbed. His throat felt raw and he could taste blood on his tongue. Hands no longer held him in place, but he no longer had the energy or will to resist. Cautious fingers trailed through his lank hair while another rubbed endless circles across the palm of his hand over the crescent shaped gouges from his nails biting into them as he clenched his hands into fists.

“He doesn’t leave us again.” The tone was final.

“TC, here. Come swap out with me. You can hold him at a better angle.”

Had he the energy, he would’ve protested at being moved again, but he was beyond exhausted. Something warm dribbled down his skin as he was forced to turn so he was mostly on his side. Everything was growing distant. Like it was happening to someone else, and he was hard pressed to care.

At least he wasn’t alone this time.

A much larger hand rested comfortingly on his shoulder.

The deep, soothing rumble of the ocean whispered above him, drowning out the other voices, and he latched onto it like a man drowning.   

 “It matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”

The darkness pulled at him, and he was happy to let it take him.


	2. Locked in a Cage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Requested by @pandigirl19 over on Tumblr who asked for Magnum to be locked in a cage. Ya'll can blame the Hardy Boys for this one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuing the Bad Things Happen Bingo card: Locked in a cage. While investigating missing dogs, Juliet and Magnum find themselves in a rather unfortunate position.

Juliet groaned as consciousness returned, slowly, and _dear God_ , what had she been drinking? Her head throbbed in time with her heart and she reflexively put her hand up to her forehead before several things occurred to her.

In all of her hangovers – few and far between as they were – they never centered at the _back_ of her head like this, and, much more puzzling, she could barely move because of a warm, heavy weight pressed in on one side of her, tangled underneath half of her and half on top. Something sharp dug into the back of her neck which wasn’t helping her headache.

 _What the bloody hell_ …

She finally managed to pry her eyes open, blinking to clear her vision.

It helped less than she liked. It was dark, save for dim light filtering through the bars and dozen or more circular holes in the walls.  

 _Bars_? _Holes_?

She attempted to sit up and promptly whacked her head against the low ceiling, which naturally just made her headache worse, sending spots dancing across her vision as she collapsed back down with a groan.

This time, when she opened her eyes, she didn’t move, cautiously taking in her surroundings.

The ceiling was only a few inches from her face, her head resting against the back of the cage and her legs folded uncomfortably to fit in the small space, the flat of her feet pressed against the door. Small air holes lined the sides, higher up near the ceiling, and the door was barred with similar circles cut into the metal.

It was a dog kennel, she realized. One of those new, extremely expensive ‘high anxiety’ cages that looked more like something from medieval torture than a dog crate designed for destructive animals with separation anxiety. She almost laughed, and then snorted in disgust. This is what she got for helping Magnum with one of his missing pet cases.

High valued pets had gone missing all over the island – championship level dogs in the AKC and working animals from the K9 units and working homes. Were those the cases Magnum took on? No. He took the one from the eleven-year-old who’s emotional support dog for his autism was stolen, who just so happened to be in the same yard as a three-thousand-dollar Pharaoh hound.

On the upside, she was fairly positive they’d found the kennel owner selling off the stolen dogs, given their current predicament.

If not, she was filing a complaint with customer service.

The kennel was likely intended for a larger breed dog, like a Saint Bernard or Tibetan Mastiff, but it was still pretty tight for a human. Even one that was only five and a half feet tall.

It was even tighter with _two_ people crammed inside.

Magnum was stuffed in beside her, half on top of her and half underneath her, his neck bent at an incredibly painful looking angle, his shoulders pressed into the corner of the kennel and his legs contorted to fit in the space enough to close the door behind them. They’d actually had to take off his shoes to make him fit – at least, she assumed that’s why he was barefoot. She couldn’t imagine any other reason.

She realized she couldn’t feel her phone in her pocket and cursed lightly. Of course they took it. Calling for help would be entirely too convenient. A quick search of Magnum’s pockets and she confirmed what she already suspected – they’d taken his, too.

“Magnum,” she tried, shifting slightly so she could at least face him instead of being crammed with his forehead pressed against the top of her head. Something caught her hair, pulling it painfully against her scalp, and she reached blindly where she thought she’d caught it on the cage somehow, but her fingers were met with tacky and warm that stuck her hair to her head and…whatever the hell _that_ was. She winced and hissed and gently pried her hair loose and managed to twist around enough to get a look at Magnum.

She couldn’t help the sympathetic wince when she saw his face. He hadn’t gotten hit in the back of the head like she had – or maybe he had, and it was just his luck he’d been hit more than once, because shy of a sedan going thirty miles an hour, not much seemed to take the detective down with one blow. The side of his face from mid forehead down to his cheek was swollen and puffy, darkening the skin around it a spectacular shade of blue and purple already. She’d be surprised if he could open that eye in the coming hours. The tacky substance in her hair was blood from where the skin split at his temple that had freely run down the side of his face, giving the macabre appearance of shedding bloody tears. Unsurprisingly, he was still unconscious.

She tried to move out from underneath him, to see if she could kick the door loose with brute force or maybe just lever the door open with enough pressure, but she was too tangled up in Magnum’s limbs to manage. She was a little too short and without him able to hold his legs out of the way of hers, she couldn’t get enough space to pull back far enough to do any measurable damage.

“Magnum,” she tried again.

Nothing.

She elbowed him in the ribs as best she could with her arm chicken-winged underneath them. She needed him awake, but she was trying to avoid being abjectly cruel with what was probably a grade 2 concussion on his part.

“ _Magnum_ ,” she tried louder.

He groaned slightly, but his eyelids didn’t so much as flutter.

She smacked top of the cage open palmed, making even herself wince at the clang of metal on skin, much louder than she’d intended.

 _That_ got a reaction.

Magnum jolted violently awake, exploding into motion before his eyes were even fully open. His head reared back into to hit the wall of the crate much like she had, his hands and feet coming up between them in a display of flexibility she would be jealous of, except for the fact that he used them to shove her violently against the opposite wall of the cramped space, pinning her there with his palms pressed against her shoulders and his knees against her thighs.

“ _Ow_ , Magnum!” she protested, bringing up her own hands as best she could to grip his forearms. “Same side!”

She could see the moment he recognized her – his dark, sharp gaze softening slightly when he realized it was her.

She could also see he was thoroughly concussed, given the unevenness of his pupils and the way he had to squint to see her.

“Higgins?”

“Yes, Magnum, me. Could you…” she glanced meaningfully at his hands, still pressed with bruising force against her shoulders. The space was already small enough without being crammed into an even smaller area.

He didn’t let go, just let his elbows bend slightly, but it was good enough.

“Are we…” Magnum cast an appraising eye over their prison.

“Literally in the dog house? Yes. My guess is Rick’s intel was correct – we found who’s been stealing dogs, but they…” she trailed off, frowning.

Magnum…wasn’t acting normal.

No, not _normal_. That was unfair. They were crammed into an unbreakable dog kennel with no way to call for help and he was sporting a pretty decent head injury, so there was some allowances she was willing to make, but then she considered how blasé he’d been about being left adrift with a homicidal federal agent, or even the general sunshine-y mood of being in the hospital after he’d been kidnapped, stabbed, again left to tread water for hours, shot and thrown from a moving vehicle by a psychotic ex.

This was different.

“Magnum, are you…”

“Shut up,” he snapped. He was breathing hard but his breaths were shallow, his eyes squeezed shut and she could see him curling further in on himself as best he could with the limited space, as if trying to make himself smaller.

Or the space seem bigger.

“Are you…claustrophobic?” she asked, not unkindly.

Magnum jerked his head once. “No,” he ground out. “I have a thing with cages.”

Juliet felt about two inches tall.

As soon as he said it, she remembered the conversation with Rick traipsing through the jungle – about how for long stretches, Magnum was kept in solitary confinement and they didn’t know if he was dead or alive.

She doubted _solitary_ was wide open spaces with plenty of light and few bars.

“I’m sorry, I –”

“ _Stop talking_ ,” he snarled, biting his lower lip. “Talking makes it smaller, so just…give me a second, okay?”

She clapped her mouth shut with an audible clack of teeth. She even held her breath, watching and waiting because there was little else to do. If talking made it seem smaller, she doubted any form of touch, comforting or not, was going to make anything better, but at the same time, if he had a panic attack in such a small space…

It took a moment for her to realize that Magnum was talking to himself. Muttering would be a more apt description, but she could catch a few words.

The words to Henley’s _Invictus_. Over and over and over again, except he didn’t get slower as he repeated them, he instead sounded like he was ramping up, skipping over portions of it or getting it out of order the faster he recited.

She knew an exercise in mindfulness when she heard one. Except…if Magnum was pulling on something to keep him here and now and _here and now_ was the problem, it wasn’t going to work.

Fully prepared to get smacked or worse for her troubles, she gripped his arms in her hands with bruising force. “Thomas Magnum, _breathe_ ,” she ordered.

Magnum’s fingers tightened on her shoulders in response.

“Magnum, I need you to focus, and what you’re doing clearly isn’t working for you. We have plenty of air. It’s uncomfortable but not crushing. We can get out of this, I promise you, but not if you hyperventilate and pass out on top of me again like some sort of wilting flower.”

It was a gamble. Magnum seemed to do better with positive reinforcement, but she also understood a primal need for honesty and SITREP in dire straits. Besides, her bedside manner was more in line with that of a porcupine and false platitudes sounded like just that when coming from her. There was just as much of a chance she was going to make this worse rather than better, but besides swimming, sitting passively on the sidelines was top of the Things She was Shit At list.

Magnum stopped muttering to himself. She felt his arms relax marginally in her hands as he forced a breath out, inhaling sharply through his nose again as he forced himself to at least try and breathe normally.

“Are you okay?” she asked, when she saw his dark eyes blink open again. She cringed inwardly at the bright red of his left eye from petechial hemorrhaging. They hit him _hard_.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m…” he trailed off, and the muscles in his arms went rigid again. “Nope. Nope. Not okay. Nope, nope, _nopenopenope_ … **fuck it**.”

With no other warning, he flipped on his back, letting go of her shoulders so that his were pressed flat against the floor of the kennel. In the same motion, he reared his feet back, knees almost to his chin before slamming both feet as hard as he possibly could against the door.

The entire cage rattled but remained intact.

He pulled his legs back again and slammed them full force into the door once more. And again, and again, and again – there wasn’t enough space for them to try it in tandem. Her knees would’ve smashed directly into his, and she was too short to get the same leverage Magnum could.

On the sixth or seventh try, she heard something crack, but it didn’t sound like metal. On the other hand, maybe it was, because Magnum lurched forwards, twisting around and narrowly avoiding kicking her in the process as he reached through one of the bars he’d managed to kick loose. It was one, and only marginally, but there was enough space he could force his hand through, fumbling for the lock on the other side.

“Magnum, my hand is much smaller, I think I can – ”

She’d barely gotten the words out when she heard a click and Magnum was out of the cage before she could finish the thought, never mind the sentence, scrambling forwards on all fours as fast as humanly possible and practically launching himself out of the kennel.

She waited a moment for him to get clear before sliding out after him. The lights were considerably brighter, and between the banging on the metal and her own head injury, they felt more like miniature suns than overhead halogens, and she had to squint to get her eyes to adjust.

“Good God, I’m going home and swallowing a bottle of aspirin,” she muttered. She carefully touched a hand to the back of her head and felt the lump already forming. “Well, maybe first a trip to the ER.”

Magnum stood several feet away, leaning over a pallet piled high with dog food bags, forehead pressed against the top bag. She could hear him fighting to get his breathing back under control, saw the way that his shoulders still shook from the adrenaline and turned away to allow the man a moment of privacy to collect himself again, except something caught her eye.

Magnum wasn’t standing evenly, one foot lifted slightly off the floor. It would’ve been easily dismissed, except she could see it shaking even from where she stood. Worse than the rest of him, so it wasn’t _just_ shock.

So it _wasn’t_ just metal she heard break.

“Magnum,” she said carefully. “What did you-”

“It’s not broken.”

“That sounds very definitive for someone without a medical degree and a tenuous grasp of first aid,” she retorted, reverting easily back to their familiar banter.

She could play the ‘let’s pretend this never happened’ game with the best of them, and she was rewarded with a hoarse chuckle from the private investigator.

“All true, but I think we can agree that I’m a bit of a human disaster, can’t we?” He lifted his head and stood up straight…ish. In the full light of the warehouse, his face looked even worse than it had when she first saw it. His left eye was definitely swelling shut, and she would be shocked if he didn’t require stitches for the gash over his eye. He listed slightly to one side but caught himself on the pallets before he fell. “I know what broken feels like. This isn’t it.”

“Tendon?”

His foot jerked slightly and he hissed. “That would be a yes. Definitely a tendon. Ugh. That’s four months recovery time.”

Juliet fought the urge to roll her eyes, instead scanning the walls for hopefully a land line she could use to call Katsumoto and an ambulance. “Oh, _no_. You’ll have to spend sixteen weeks on your back in the lap of luxury on an multi-million dollar island paradise estate, sipping drinks from coconut shells with little umbrellas in them while your friends and Kumu Mother Hen you.”

Magnum actually laughed at that, and she felt a weight she didn’t realize was there slowly lift from her chest. Psychology was not her forte, and she meant it when she said psychiatrists retired on cases like Magnum, but she was glad he was at least…well, something she was familiar with.

In denial.

She spotted the phone. “Don’t move. I’m calling back up.”

“Uh, could we not mention the part where we were locked in a dog kennel?” Magnum asked. “Not for any real reason, just…you know…kinda embarrassing, you know?”

“Said the man who knows no shame,” she retorted. But she saw the flash of something in Magnum’s gaze. Something more than just worry or awkwardness.

There was something darker there. Something she wasn’t prepared to try and understand – maybe not ever.

She thought about how to this day, Magnum never called himself a prisoner.

“You think _I_ want to admit that we were locked in a cage together?” she said instead, rolling her eyes. “Please. I have a reputation to think about, Magnum.”

Yes. Two could play at this game.   

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're wondering how the hell two grown adults were crammed into a cage, I highly recommend looking up Impact Crates, specifically, one called "the Colossal 750". It's four feet long, and 38 inches wide. I made it shorter in this, more like a Navy coffin rack, but you know what? It's fiction, and I can do it. Plus, if you look it up, you can see what a pain in the ass it would be to break out of it. Anyway. Higgins is still a challenge to write, but I hope I did her justice. It took until about episode 15 for me to really like her, probably because I share a lot of her negative traits and I don't like seeing them play out on a screen in front of me. But, lemme know what you think! And as always, feel free to come say hi over on Tumblr @disappearinginq!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More of my Bad Things Happen Bingo: "withholding medical treatment", requested by @amell-fan on Tumblr.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dun dun dun - one more slot in my Bingo card. Short, without a hella lot of details, but hopefully it fulfills the request of "withholding medical treatment". Rick gets to be a badass. I get to gloss over proper procedure. I get to write some bromance. A good day was had by all. Onwards!

He’d never seen Thomas look so pale.

He pressed down harder on the bleeding wound, the overshirt already soaked through with red. Cold, pale fingers shook as they tried to push his away, but every ounce of strength was gone.

“Leave it,” he snapped, ignoring the tremble in those scarred hands.

His response was so quiet, Rick almost missed it.

“ _I’m going to bleed out_ ,” Magnum slurred, his head falling back against the door of the Rover. His chest barely moved, breathing rapid and shallow as he fought to keep his eyes open, even though every time he blinked, they stayed closed longer and longer.

Rick shook his head. Whether to tell Magnum that, _no¸ you most certainly are-fucking-not_ or to ward off the sudden image of a disturbingly similar scenario, many years ago on the dirt floor of a makeshift cell block beneath the earth, feeling just as useless as he did now, trapped behind a locked cage door. “No, you’re not.”

“ y’got ‘nother….bullet?”

He _wished_.

“We have to go to a hospital,” he snarled at the driver instead.

The young man behind the wheel didn’t even bother to turn around. He was hunched over the wheel as if it would make him invisible, flinching when Rick raised his voice. “No. You’re a-a soldier. I know it. You talk like one. You can make do.”

“Look, kid, carjacking is one thing. Shooting someone is another. _Negligent homicide_ is a whole _new_ matter entirely.”

“Then I guess you best make sure he lives, huh?” the passenger said, leaning around to point his gun at Magnum. “Unless you think I ought to just put him out of his misery now, huh?”

Rick gritted his teeth. “You shoot him, you better be the fastest gun since Jesse James, because then I’ll be out of reasons to let you live.”

The man laughed. “You got balls, son. I’ll give you that. But that’s pretty ambitious for someone sitting on the wrong side of a gun, unarmed, with his hands tied together.”

“Ambitious,” Rick conceded in a flat voice. “But not wrong.”

“Lee, maybe we _should_ – ”

Lee turned on his partner so fast Rick was surprised he didn’t get whiplash, cuffing the kid in the back of the head hard enough that the Rover swerved into the opposite lane before the driver wrestled it back onto the right side. “What’d I tell you, dumbass?”

The kid flinched. “Just drive.”

“That’s right. Just _drive_. I don’t need you getting any smart ideas.”

“If he dies, you’ll be lucky to go down for murder one,” Rick pointed out. He tried not to think about the warmth of the soaked rag beneath his fingers. Tried not to look at the growing stain on the high-end leather of the Rover’s back seat. Or how cold Magnum’s fingers were. Or the way his teeth chattered. Or tried to shift away from him every time Rick pressed down to stem the bleeding.

Lee scoffed. “And if we’re _unlucky_ , hot shot?” The gun remained pointed at Thomas, who twisted against the corner of the seat and the door, did little more than glare blearily at him.

“No one will ever find your bodies.”

The kid’s fearful eyes met his in the rearview mirror, and Rick knew he had his attention.

“Hawaii’s a great place for body dumping,” Rick continued conversationally. “Volcanoes. An ocean filled with currents that’ll take you miles out in a matter of minutes and sharks that may or may not be tempted to take a chunk out of you. Rainforests so dense and damp that the only way anyone is gonna find you is by accident, fifty years from now when the only thing left behind is your teeth.” Rick paused, considering it for a moment. “And that’s assuming I leave you _with_ your teeth.”

“You ain’t doing squat from the back seat of a car with your hands tied, so sit back, shut the hell up, and take care of your friend before I decide I don’t want to listed to him moan anymore,” Lee snapped. “As you just helpfully pointed out, lots’a places for bodies ‘round here.”

“Or,” Rick immediately snapped back, “you could just let us out at the fucking curb, I’ll lie and tell them this is _your_ car, _you_ took us to the hospital after we were attacked by _someone else_ , and you can drive off at your own pace while shock and trauma robs me of any cognitive memory of what you looked like when the police come calling.”

“Lee – ” the driver tried again, but shut up when Lee raised his hand again.

“Why would you do something like that?” Lee asked suspiciously.

“Because this ain’t my car, and I don’t give a rat’s ass about what happens to it, or you, if you let my friend live,” Rick said. He didn’t mention the part where it belonged to a feisty British majordomo who took her job a little too seriously that would hunt them down later having made no such promise to leave them be.

He also didn’t mention the fact that the Rover was equipped with Lo-Jack, they were already two hours late returning the vehicle to the Nest, and Higgins was going to wonder what the hell they were doing on the wrong side of the island when she got impatient and looked up their location on that fancy laptop of hers. He just hoped they were out of the vehicle by the time the cops showed up, because he had no doubt Higgins was the type to report the car stolen if she thought they were off joyriding, and there was no way Thomas was going to survive a high-speed chase.

Lee stared at him, assessing. Rick could see him mull it over in his head, weighing the benefits of not having a murder attached to him, hassle of having to hide a body if he did against the likelihood that Rick was lying about not telling the hospital staff the truth.

“It doesn’t even have to be a hospital for chrissakes,” Rick snapped. “I’ll take a goddamn vet at this point. A CVS with a pharmacy and a phone, I _don’t care_ , but if you don’t let us out of the vehicle, I’m going to make your lives a goddamn _nightmare_ for what remains of them.”

“We’ll think about it.”

And Lee turned back around, completely ignoring the two men in the backseat.

Rick forcibly bit the inside of his cheek to keep from saying anything, desperately trying to channel his inner Nuzo to keep his mouth shut and not antagonize the bad guys into letting Thomas die out of spite for something _he_ said. The hospital was a good option. Lee just had to convince himself that it was his idea, and not something he’d been bullied into by a hostage.

Rick just didn’t know if he had that kind of time.

The hole in Magnum’s leg missed the artery, or he would’ve been dead already, but that didn’t mean he was in the clear. Close range, the exit wound was large and messy, and besides a shirt, Rick had literally nothing for first aid. If they’d been driving the Ferrari, or even his Porsche, there wouldn’t have even been space for them to be hostages, but that’s what they got for doing Higgins a favor and taking the Rover in for service while they were already in town and she was entertaining another cultural tour of the Nest. It also meant no first aid kits.

He pressed down harder on the still bleeding wound, though the shirt was already saturated through. Magnum hardly moved under the new onslaught of pain, and Rick tried not to think about the sound he made that wasn’t quite human. He was conscious, but just barely, his teeth chattering against the cold of shock, but he could do little more than let Rick try whatever he could to stem the flow of blood.

The car rounded a corner and came to a screeching halt in the middle of the road, skidding on the tarmac before coming to a stop.

It took all of Rick’s effort to keep Thomas from flying off the seat, and he cried out as Rick’s full weight came down on his leg, even has he braced his shoulder against the seatback in front of him.

“Shit, sorry Thomas,” he apologized quickly, risking a glance out the windshield. He half expected traffic, or road work, but he almost laughed out loud when he saw the flashing red and blue lights.

Higgins was more paranoid than he gave her credit for. Or maybe Katsumoto was a better detective than he thought.

Either way, he owed them both drinks, because he’d never been happier to see half of HPD creating a road block with weapons drawn and pointed at him.

Two more cruisers pulled in behind them, blocking them from backing up and making an escape in reverse.

This was more than just Higgins being annoyed and vindictive about the car going rogue. Someone had to have reported the carjacking, or gunshots, or something, because this was a coordinated response – no matter how little Katsumoto liked Magnum, there was no way he would rope half the department into teaching him a lesson about joyriding without the majordomo’s permission.

“This is HPD – step out of the car with your hands in the air where we can see them, nice and slow,” Katsumoto called over the radio loudspeaker. “We have you surrounded. Don’t do anything stupid.”

Rick snickered, though it was probably more nervous relief than actual humor. “Ha, ha,” he managed, reminiscent of Nelson Muntz. “I take back all previous offers. You’re screwed.”

“Am I?” Lee snarled.

Rick didn’t have time to contemplate what the gunman could possibly mean before the man threw open his door, using it as a shield between himself and the police, swinging around to rip open the door Thomas was leaning against, grabbed him by the back of his shirt and yanked him out of the vehicle before Rick could protest or even think to stop him.

The soaked makeshift bandage came loose in his hand as Thomas was ripped out from underneath it, hauled up in front of Lee as a human shield.

Thomas didn’t even scream, and maybe that was worse. He couldn’t stand on his own, the only reason he was upright was Lee’s arm around his neck and shoulder, the little color he had absolutely gone, his face ashen and pale. Rick was honestly shocked the abrupt change in position didn’t make cause him to pass out, but dammit all if Magnum was a fighter. Dark eyes kept threatening to roll to the back of his head as he fought to stay conscious, one trembling hand on Lee’s arm holding him up, and the other hovering shakily over the gunshot wound to his leg as he tried to keep his weight off of it.

“I already shot him once,” Lee shouted at Katsumoto. “I’m okay with doing it again. Are you?”

Katsumoto’s face didn’t so much as flicker. That man should’ve been a professional poker player. “If your goal is to get out of this alive, I wouldn’t do that.”

“Yeah?” Lee snarled, digging the muzzle of the pistol into Magnum’s jaw with bruising force. “Well, maybe I got different plans.”

“Your intent suicide by cop?” Katsumoto retorted. “We can do that. But first, release the hostage.”

“This guy?” asked Lee, his tone suddenly pitching towards mania. “This guy, right here?” He gave Magnum a slight shake. “Nah. I don’t think so. I kinda like the sounds he makes.” And with that, he took the gun from Magnum’s jaw to shove against the wound in his leg.

The ragged scream barely made it past Magnum’s lips before Rick slammed into Lee, catching the gunman in the side with his shoulder hard enough he heard the crack of ribs. He collided with such force he actually knocked Thomas forwards and away from them, his friend half catching himself with one hand – just enough to not smash his teeth out on the concrete – before collapsing to the ground.

Rick didn’t see any of it. Didn’t hear the police shouting, didn’t hear Katsumoto order the other officers not to shoot, didn’t hear the go ahead for the EMT’s.

His vision tunneled. He grabbed Lee by the hair, twisting it as hard as he could, his nails digging into the man’s skull as he yanked his head up by the hair only to smash it down against the road with an audible crack.

“ _Shoot **my** friend, **will you**_?” Rick snarled through gritted teeth, gripping the gunman’s head in his bloodied fingers. “ _Refuse to take him to a hospital, **huh**_?” He slammed Lee’s head down again. “ _Maybe **I’ll** like the sounds **you** make_.”

He wrenched the man’s head up again, with every intention of smashing it against the road until it split – and maybe not stopping even then – except…

“ _Rick_.”

He froze, fingers still gouging into Lee’s scalp, halfway to slamming it down again.

“ _Rick_.”

He turned to Thomas, who was currently being fitted to a back board as one of the EMT’s pressed sterile dressing against the entry wound, despite him trying to flinch away from contact.

Thomas was barely conscious. If Rick hadn’t seen the hell that man could go through, he would’ve been surprised. He could tell that the medics were – though impressed was probably the wrong word for it. Thomas’s hands automatically went to the oxygen mask, pulling stubbornly at it the second they replaced it, rolling his upper body as soon as they let go of him as they kept trying to hold his hands down while they strapped him in.

Rick dropped Lee without a second thought, reaching for Magnum’s clumsily flailing hand as it reached for the mask again.

“Leave it,” he ordered, gently placing Thomas’s hand back at his side.

Magnum’s fingers gripped Rick’s sleeve, twisting in the fabric. The mask fogged slightly as he tried to speak, but whatever it was, was lost in the chaos.

He tried not think how unnervingly familiar all of this was.

At least they weren’t being loaded into a helicopter.

Rick suddenly found himself gripping Thomas’s hand, the sudden sensation of dread that this would be the last time he’d see Thomas alive so forceful he felt himself stumble.

Maybe that was just because the EMT’s finally lifted him from the ground. At least, that’s what he told himself.

A hand on his shoulder had him flinching, jerking violently at the slight touch.

Katsumoto held his hands back, palms out in ‘surrender’ pose, and it was only then that Rick realized he’d been trying to talk to him for the past several moments.

“Should I call your friend?” Katsumoto asked. Judging from the slight sigh at the end of the question, Rick guessed he must have asked it more than once.

“Yeah. Sure. Probably.”

The detective raised an eyebrow, then glanced back at the unconscious gunman. “Normally, the precinct would be your next stop, but –”

“I think I’m in shock. I need medical attention,” Rick recited hollowly. That was what his uncle taught him to tell the police – or anyone else, for that matter – if things ever went sideways. Something close to it anyway.

Katsumoto’s lips twitched in what might’ve been a knowing smirk, but who could tell? “I’ll take care of it.”

Rick wasn’t even sure what ‘it’ was, but he didn’t care.

Huh. Maybe it _was_ shock.

Or maybe just relief.

Whatever it was, it didn’t matter. He let the EMT’s load Thomas into the back of the waiting ambulance, his hand still gripping tightly against cold fingers.

Cold fingers that held onto his just as tightly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I admit, the ending feels rushed to me, but that could also be the insomnia talking. I did *try* and write it like Rick was going slowly into shock - I know it kinda creeps up on me and I can go from "this is fine" to "how did I get here?" real quick. Anyway. Let me know what you think! Drop me a line here, or come say hi over on Tumblr @disappearinginq!


	4. Surf's Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bad Things Happen Bingo: Big Brother Instinct

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It probably doesn't exactly fit Big Brother Instinct, but it's going there anyway because that discussion was how I came up with this idea. Which I started in February. Ugh. This took FOREVER, and I'm still not sure about the ending, but a lot of the hinted at things come into play in Wrong Side, so they're kinda vague on purpose. The ending is also very different from what it originally was, so SURPRISE, PLOT TWIST! Anyway. Ahem. Onwards!

Juliet didn’t regret a lot of things in life. Not her service in MI6, not taking up Masters on his job offer as a majordomo, or meeting Richard. And lately, she didn’t even mind Magnum and the shenanigans he dragged her into. Not that she’d ever say it out loud, but it was… _nice_ , getting out of the compound and doing something that was more meaningful than running facial recognition on the UPS delivery driver.

She was, however, having serious doubts about taking up Magnum’s invite to come surfing at Sandy Beach Park.

“Come _on_ , Higgy!” Magnum had protested, putting on his best smile as he grabbed his board from the boat house. “It’ll be fun!”

She’d tried to gracefully bow out of it. “I’m paid to watch the estate, and it’s a little hard to do when not actually here.”

Magnum glanced down at the two Dobermans. “What the hell are they for if they can’t watch the house without you?”

As if sensing Magnum was complaining about them, Apollo growled, pinning his ears. Magnum responded by sticking his tongue out.

“Stop antagonizing them, and they’ll stop growling at you,” she reprimanded, continuing on before he could protest about it not being his fault. “And besides, the lads are fine on their own, but it’s still working hours, and I’m not paid to go to the beach.”

Thomas raised an eyebrow at that. “By that logic, you shouldn’t leave the property, _ever_ , and you do it plenty when you’re helping me with a client.”

“Oh, is that what you call it?” she asked archly.

He frowned, like he wasn’t entirely sure what else it could be. “Well…yeah. I mean, if you really don’t want to come chase down bad guys or investigate cases, then fine. I’ll stop asking. But you seem to have fun when you do, so I keep inviting you.”

She felt herself blush. She really didn’t _mean_ to be so standoffish with him, it was just…self-defense on her part. She was a spy – ex, or not, it meant she had trust issues. There were no such thing as genuinely _good_ people in her line of work, and after Richard, she just…couldn’t stand the idea of losing someone she cared about again. Even as a friend. So it just seemed easier to not have any.

Robin accused her of being a recluse, and she hadn’t argued, because she couldn’t. And in her less than charitable moods, she wondered if part of the reason Robin invited Magnum to stay in the guest house was because he full well knew that Magnum would suck her into his orbit and force her to get out of the house.

“Look, if you really don’t want to come, then that’s fine,” Thomas said. He pulled his board down from the top shelf. “You don’t have to. But just remember – you’re an employee, not a prisoner. You’re entitled to have some fun every once in a while.”

He’d left then, heading to the front gate where Rick and TC were supposed to be coming to pick him up – the Ferrari wasn’t exactly built for strapping down surf boards before heading out to the beach. The estate had a decent swimming beach, but given the sheltered cove, the waves were minimum at best. Not even good for body surfing, unless there was a storm moving in.

She’d eyed the other boards on the rack. There was at least a half dozen more. They hadn’t been taken out or used the entire time she’d been majordomo at the Nest.

Something in the way that Thomas said ‘not a prisoner’ made her finally give in. She didn’t delve into the psychology of it at the moment – she was too busy grabbing a board of her own and catching up to Magnum to see if he would wait for her to change to dwell on it.

There was just something…off…about it.

It hardly mattered. By the time they’d arrived at the beach, she’d completely forgotten about it.

Because somehow, she hadn’t really thought this through.

She’d never been surfing. Never had the desire. She liked snorkeling and diving and shell collecting. She watched a surf competition once since she moved here, and after seeing three competitors eliminated for near drowning, breaking boards and bones, she decided Americans (and Australians) were crazy, and she wanted no part of it.

But at the same time, it was nice to be included in something that didn’t involve bullets, breaking and entering, high speed chases, and, inevitably, the police.

She’d made her peace with the fact that she was just going to enjoy the beach. She didn’t have to surf, right? She could just sit and watch from the board and not try to bludgeon her own skull in trying to catch an adrenaline rush.

She made it midway out – just past the close-to-shore breakers, but not nearly far enough out she would bother the more experienced surfers, and from here, she could see where the waves were breaking and easily avoid them. Observation was a part of learning, right? She could just treat this like another mission. Yeah. That’s what she would do. Observe.

It _was_ fun to watch though.

Magnum was never the type to take anything too seriously, and while other surfers at least tried to ride the waves, he was all over the place – half the time he didn’t bother to stand, or…surf, really. At least, not what she called surfing. While everyone else made a concentrated effort to stay on their boards, Magnum seemed to be having way more fun falling off. His grin was wide enough she could see it even from where she was floating, and while she couldn’t hear him over the waves, she could tell he was having a _fantastic_ time.

Rick had a balance and ease with his board, she felt a pang of jealousy. While not reckless like Magnum, he could shoot through the waves with envious precision. She had a vague memory of him mentioning having spent time in Hawaii before he’d ever joined the military, and she could easily picture the man as a teen on the beach with a girl on each arm.

She was so preoccupied watching those two, and the dozen or so other surfers out enjoying the gorgeous weather and waves, that she didn’t notice someone come up beside her until he spoke.

“So…” TC said conversationally, “you come out all this way to hang out by yourself in No Man’s Land?”

She would deny the startled scream until her dying day.

It was made slightly better by the fact that TC was _not_ expecting her reaction and jumped enough that he wound up flipping his board and himself.

After apologizing profusely, turning ninety shades of red after he came back up sputtering and looking indignant, she couldn’t help but laugh.

It was something just so _normal_. She’d forgotten what that was really like.

“I’m sorry, TC, I didn’t mean…” she smothered a snicker behind a hand when he shot her a teasing glare as he made a show of uselessly ringing out his rash guard.

“Yeah, yeah. Sure you are. You always wound this tight?”

She shrugged helplessly. “I like to think not, but…”

TC smirked. “Uh huh. So lemme ask you a question, Juliet Higgins. Why’d you let Thomas drag you out here if you’ve never been on a board before?”

She ducked her head, wincing as she looked back up at him. “Is it that obvious?”

TC chuckled. “Only ‘cause it’s you. If you had any idea what you were doing, you’d be out there snaking and shredding waves. So. What’s the deal?”

It was moderately aggravating how often these three men could knock her off balance. She was so used to dealing with subversive facts and lies of omission that their candidness made her trip over her prepared responses. But familiar as she was with trading lies for lies, she couldn’t do it face to face with honesty.

As she floundered for a response, TC took pity on her.

“Lemme guess. You got bored with being cooped up at that fortress of Robin’s that you agreed to the first non-case related thing Thomas invited you to without really thinking things through?” he guessed.

“Something like that,” she admitted. “I’ve never surfed. Never had the desire. And then, whenever I considered it…”

TC hummed in agreement. “Yeah. When Orville brought it up the first time, the first thing I did was look it up on YouTube. And then I decided that man was crazy, and clearly trying to kill me. Took him about…oh, I dunno…three hours before he turned to blackmail to get me in the water. But here I am today.”

She smiled at that.

“You know, you could ask Rick to teach you.”

Juliet snorted. “No, thank you. I’ll…just watch for now. I don’t quite feel like making myself look the fool today.”

A loud shout from the waves turned both their heads as Magnum rocketed through barrel of one of the larger waves, form perfect as he crouched low over the board, balancing with his hand trailing through face as the wave curled behind him, only to purposely zag sideways, spinning wildly in a hard right turn, throwing himself off the board in a dive.

TC just shook his head. “Don’t seem to bother him any,” he said, nodding towards where Magnum disappeared beneath the waves, his board tumbling through the white water as it crashed. “He knows damn well how to surf.  He’s just having fun now. I am in fact 99% positive he’s a fish.”

“Only 99?”

“Waiting on DNA results.”

Juliet laughed out loud at that one.

She was enjoying herself enough she actually almost missed Rick paddling by until he swerved mid stroke to swing in beside TC.

“So…” he drawled. “How’s it going?”

“Higgy doesn’t know how to surf,” TC explained before she could stop him. When he caught the death glare she was giving him, he shrugged unapologetically. “You act like we don’t know you, Higgy-baby. Like I said – if you had any idea what you were doing, you’d be showing it off by now.”

Higgins tried not to flush bright red at the insinuation that she was a show off. She _liked_ being good at things. She was so used to people dismissing her off the bat that she felt like she _had_ to show them what she could do. Did it really come off as showboating?

“You wanna learn?” Rick asked. “You do yoga every morning, so balancing isn’t going to be that much of an issue.” He paused, frowning. “Unless you have zero sense of rhythm, then you’re gonna spend most of the day trying not to drown. But we can start on the smaller waves if you want, just to get you standing.”

“I’m not sure it’s worth your time, Rick,” she tried. “Aside from snorkeling, aquatics aren’t really my area of expertise.”

Rick and TC exchanged looks before looking back to her in unison. It was actually a little unnerving watching them have a silent conversation like that.

“So what you’re saying is, if you’re not automatically good at something, it’s not worth doing?” asked TC.

“No…”

“Or do you seriously have that much of a hang up about learning in front of others? You think anyone cares?” Rick gestured to the small crowd out on the waves.

Sure, there were the ones out by the much larger waves, who clearly knew what they were doing, but they seemed to wipe out just as often as the ones on the smaller breaks nearer to shore. They were smiling, laughing…

Enjoying themselves.

“Having fun isn’t fatal,” Rick pointed out.

“Fun, no. Riding a bit of foam and plastic with nothing between you and a concussion except God’s grace is another matter entirely,” she pointed out.

Rick pushed himself up into a sitting position, straddling his board and easily balancing in the current. “Eh,” he shrugged. “Took me six months to learn to surf well enough I was confident enough to try the pipeline, and I was a teenager who lived on the beach with nothing else to do except practice.” 

“I can’t believe I’m letting you talk me into this,” Higgins groused.

“And I can’t believe you’ve lived in Hawaii for three and a half years and never been surfing,” Rick countered. “Today is full of surprises. Now, are you going to make an effort, or are you going to chicken out and go tanning with Kumu instead?”

Damn the man if he didn’t know exactly what button to push to convince her to at least try.

“Fine,” she agreed.

Rick smirked. “Wow. The wild enthusiasm there was a little stunning. Might want to tone it down a bit. Come on. We’ll practice in the smaller waves.”

An hour later, and sorer than she would’ve thought possible from trying to balance on a piece of plastic covered foam on waves preteens on boogie boards were having considerably better luck on, Juliet admitted temporary defeat and decided Kumu had the right idea: carbs, sunscreen, a good book and a beach towel on the warm sand.

She’d waved the guys off, emphasizing the _temporary_ part of her acquiescence. They’d come to surf, not babysit, and she’d managed to at least finish on a high note, and that was good enough for her. No broken bones, no sand burn from wiping out in the shallows, and she even managed to ride one wave all the way into the beach.

Juliet found herself strangely – and pleasantly – surprised that the raucous cheering from both TC, Rick and the other practice surfers felt genuine.

And best of all, no one noticed just how poor a swimmer she actually was. She made a mental note to try swimming somewhere besides the protected cove at the Nest to improve herself before settling down on the sand beside Kumu’s chair.

“Oh look,” Kumu said, peering over her sunglasses with a smirk. “You _aren’t_ allergic to fun.”

Juliet allowed herself a small smile before taking Kumu’s offered paperback – which was, of course, the second in the White Knight series, looking well worn and loved.

“Today is full of surprises,” she agreed.

* * *

 

“She seemed to improve,” Thomas commented as Rick and TC made their way back out to the lineup. The waves were getting bigger, but not dangerously so. Not as long as they avoided straying too far to the left of the beach where the volcanic rocks jutted up out of the sea, creating white wash and swirling eddies as the tide came in.

At least a dozen or so other surfers were out with them, waiting their turn for the next break.

“Well, when you start at rock bottom, there’s nowhere to go but up,” Rick said. “But she was at least more agreeable that TC here when I started teaching him.” He clapped his friend enthusiastically on the back with a wet _smack_. “ _Buddy_.”

“You were decidedly less nice about teaching me, _pal_ ,” TC retorted with his own overly-‘affectionate’ clap that made Rick wince.

“You’re right,” Rick agreed. “Very unprofessional of me to resort to blackmail. _E kala mai iaʻu_. Forgive me?” He held up his hand for their familial high-five, innocently batting his eyes.

As soon as TC reached for him, Thomas could tell the exact moment TC realized his mistake. Too late. Rick grabbed him by wrist at the same time as he kicked the near side of TC’s board, flipping the larger man ass over teakettle into the water.

“And on that note, I see my wave – catch me if you can, old man!” Rick crowed, paddling off as soon as TC’s head cleared the surface, sputtering indignantly and glaring daggers at his retreating back.

“Yeah, you better run, _Orville_!” 

Magnum couldn’t help but laugh, even as he held TC’s board for him to easily slide back on. “Oh yeah. That was menacing. I’m sure he’s just quaking in his board shorts.”

“Shut it, TM.” TC jabbed a pointed finger at him. “Ya’ll yahoos are gonna turn me gray faster than you made Nuzo bald.”

Thomas sniggered. “You’d be distinguished…” he trailed off, watching Rick shoot for the upcoming swell. It would be a beauty – big enough he would be able to ride it into the shallows if he managed to catch it, and Magnum had yet to see him miss.

Except Rick wasn’t the only one aiming for it.

A man, probably in his upper forties who should’ve known better than to jump the line and snake a wave like that, was paddling just as hard for the wave, ignoring or oblivious to Rick several yards behind him.

It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion, and Thomas was moving before he even had time to process what he knew – that Rick wasn’t going to see the other surfer until it was too late, that the man was going to crumble the wave and Rick was going to wipeout much too close to the edge and go down in the soup and into the rocks and reef.

(*(

Rick didn’t even see the other surfer until the man stood on his board, appearing out of nowhere as far as Rick was concerned, too far out on the crest to be able to ride it well but close enough to ruin it for him.

“Hey, hey, _hey!_ ” Rick shouted, “I got it, I’m on it!”

The guy either didn’t hear, didn’t care, or didn’t know how to kick out, because he kept going.

“ _Move!_ ” Rick shouted, cutting sharply to avoid ramming into the man. He managed to keep his balance, throwing his left hand high and his right down low to balance, as his legs bent and pushing the board forwards.

He might’ve made it, if the guy had any idea what he was doing and got out of the way, but he didn’t. Instead of swerving or kicking out over the back of the crest, he lurched sideways, crumbling the wave in front of Rick and snaking the wave out from underneath him.

Rick toppled backwards into the surf, his board flipping up over his head as he went down, _hard_ , into the swell of the wave.

*&*

White wash was always disorienting. Up from down was impossible in the best of circumstances, and the waves were relentless, toppling anyone and anything ass over teakettle in whatever direction it could.

There was a reason why one avoided the rocks.

Rick opened his eyes against the stinging salt, looking for the bright of the sun to aim for but also immediately trying to aim _away_ from where he knew he’d gone down. Current went in every direction, eddying around the shallows of ocean floor, the rocks and the incoming tide, spinning him about without time to even figure out up from down.

Time seemed to move really fast and yet really slow – he could feel the churn of the water, the pull of his tether on his ankle yanking him along with the board caught on the top of the wave as he went up and over in the barrel of the crashing wave – the white obscuring everything as he crashed into the rocks.

His chest slammed into one of the sharp volcanic rocks with enough force to knock the air from his lungs and reflexively suck in another breath.

Except he was still underwater.

And now he was actively drowning.

Reflex and instinct made him cough and choke to spit up the water except there was no air to replace it and the salt water burned like acid down his throat and into his lungs, panic kicking survival instinct into high gear and rationale to the curb. He lost track of the surface versus the floor, flailing in the churning surf until something caught his ankle, catching him in the barrel of another wave as the crest came down on him, slamming his head into the rocks.

* * *

 

Thomas abandoned his board, ripping the tether from his ankle as dove in – the last thing he needed was a buoy preventing him from diving attached to him.

The white water made it almost impossible to see.

Almost.

The water was clearer here in Hawaii than anything off the coast of Coronado or anywhere else he’d been diving. Even with the sting of salt in his eyes and the dark rashguard Rick had blending with the rocks, it was easy enough for him to pick his friend out of the soup.

The blood in the water helped.

So did the fact that he wasn’t being taken with the current – Magnum saw the tether line caught on a jagged outcropping still tied to Rick’s ankle. The board was gone or broken but the rope held fast, keeping Rick from reaching the surface, but at the same time, kept him in place for the incoming surf to basically body slam him into the rocks.

Swimming in the swirling eddies was probably suicidal by most standards. If Thomas stopped to think, he might’ve agreed.

It still wouldn’t have stopped him.

He grabbed onto Rick’s lifeless – _don’t think that-_ body, wrapping himself around his friend’s torso and taking the brunt of the next wave, reaching for the diving knife he kept strapped to his leg any time he was in the water.

Thank god for old habits.

The knife sliced easily through rope, and suddenly they were tumbling free, the crest of the wave lifting them over the sharp volcanic rocks, even as they tumbled through the surf and across the rocks, the sharp edges and angles slicing through his rashguard and skin. It was like being caught in a never ending motorcycle crash and for a moment, the only thing Magnum could think of was the chopper crash in Afghanistan.

Now was not the time.

Small nicks and cuts were the least of his concerns, and he braced with his bare feet against the reef, bending his knees and craning his head back and over until he was curved almost in a perfect ‘c’, Rick still clutched in his arms as he moved with the wave instead of against it, angling sideways to bring them away from the reef edge.

His foot slipped, slicing open on the edge of the reef, careening them sideways instead of the angle he was hoping for, but they were cleared enough to make it out of the maelstrom and into the open water. 

Thomas’s head finally broke the surface and he sucked in a much needed breath. He hadn’t been down for long – less than a minute – but it seemed like ages, and it was even longer for Rick, who still wasn’t conscious. Thomas clutched him to his chest as he turned his back to the shore, keeping Rick’s head above water, tilted back against his shoulder as he swam sideways towards the beach.

There was yelling. It may have been directed towards him, but he wasn’t listening. At least not to them.

He was listening for any sign of life from his friend.

His feet hit the sand and he managed to half stand, half stumble onto the sand, coughing and choking even as he pressed two fingers to the side of Rick’s neck with almost bruising force.

Thready and thin, but still there. The gash across side of his head bled freely down the side of his face, the salt water mixing with the blood like a deranged water color painting, and the numerous tiny cuts started to bleed, too, and the skin around his head wound was already turning an angry red and purple bruise.

But Rick wasn’t breathing.

 “Don’t you _fucking dare_ ,” Magnum snarled, immediately straddling Rick’s chest – he could hear Rick’s voice in his head mocking ‘ _people will talk_ ’ – and starting chest compressions.

 _Fuck. What were the rules for CPR now_? _Was he still supposed to breathe for him? Or was that taking away from the circulation of blood and oxygen to the brain? Was it different for drowning_?

Facts blurred along with his vision.

Sensory perception in shock was a bizarre thing. He could hear people. People he was sure he recognized but couldn’t name, the rush of the surf that still pulled at his feet and dragged the sand out from underneath them as it washed back out to sea, the pounding of blood in his own ears and his own ragged breathing.

All that noise and he couldn’t hear the one thing he wanted.

Rick.

“God _dammit_ , Rick, **_LIVE_**!” In a moment of pure spite and rage against the cosmos, he slammed his fist into Rick’s chest hard enough he heard a crack and suddenly Rick was jackknifing upwards, hacking and sputtering and choking, salt water and blood mixing together as Thomas grabbed him by his shirt sleeve and pulled him sideways to vomit up any water still in his lungs.

After a minute, Rick collapsed back onto the beach, groaning as he touched a shaky hand to the sizeable gash across his head. “ _Ow_. Why does everything hurt? And why does my mouth taste like margarita Monday and the Sahara?”

He was alive. He was alive, _alive_ , **_alive_**.

And yet…

And _yet…_

His fingers dug into material of Rick’s rash guard, trying to force himself to _focus_ , to anchor himself here and now on the sand, trying not to stare at the swirl of red and sea water in the eddy of the encroaching tide washing out around them and the sun no longer felt warm on his back as the chill of the cave pressed in around them.  

Thomas shook his head.

 _Hawaii_. Not Afghanistan. The ocean and a freak accident, not the purposeful slow drowning of water boarding. Rash guard, not BDU undershirt.

It was 2019. Not 2017.

They were fine. _They were fine_. **_Fine_**.

He didn’t even realize he wasn’t breathing right until someone grabbed his wrist, and he tried to yank it free but the hand followed easily.

“Hey, whoa there buddy…”

He bit his lower lip with enough force he tasted copper and iron mixed with the salt of the seawater still dripping down his face.

The grip on his wrist tightened to bruising force and he blinked, trying to focus on the fingers.

“Five things.”

Thomas’s attention snapped back to Rick, who was now looking at him with a mix of concern and _knowing_.

“You’re turning blue, Thomas. Take a breath. Five things.”

The inhale was sharp and stuttered, hardly enough to really count but he managed to blurt out: “The beach. The water. Black. Red. Hands.”

Rick nodded, wincing slightly. “Good. Four.”

Thomas dug his fingers into the sand beneath them. “The sand. The sun. The wind.” He felt something slowly start to uncoil from around his throat and for the first time in what felt like hours, he took a real breath. “You.”

“Three,” Rick prodded, his grip still bruisingly tight on Magnum’s wrist.

Thomas took another shuddering breath, closed his eyes, and concentrated. Auditory was always the sense he tripped over the most. “Gulls. The surf. People yelling.”

Rick smirked, and let his head drop bag against the beach, closing his eyes against the sun, humming in agreement. “I think that’s TC’s brand of worry. Two.”

“Someone’s grill. Salt. Though that might just be water up my nose.”

“Still counts. One.”

Thomas ran his tongue along the inside of his lip. “Blood.”

Rick cracked an eye open. “Not what I was hoping for, but you look about as bad as I feel so I’ll let it slide. You okay?”

Thomas touched a finger to the spreading bruise on Rick’s forehead, gently prodding at the deepening purple and blue, but he didn’t feel the give of broken bone. And Rick was awake, and lucid – which was more than he could say for himself -  which was a good sign.

“We should take you to the hospital,” he said, purposely ignoring the question. “Make sure your brain isn’t any more scrambled than it was.”

Rick grumbled under his breath. “I don’t need an MRI to tell you that it is. But if it’s all the same to you, any time you want to get off me would be great ‘cause I think you broke something with your oh-so-tender loving care.”

Most of Thomas’s weight was on his knees on either side of Rick, but he pushed himself to his feet anyway, offering a hand to his friend. “You need a hand?”

Rick sighed. “I’m collecting my thoughts. Debating if here is as good a place as any to die. The world is already spinning, and I don’t want to puke on a public beach. Just give me a Viking funeral.” Despite his protests, he held out both hands to Thomas.

As soon as he was upright though, he promptly turned his head to the side and dry heaved into the sand, one hand going to his ribs as the muscle contractions pulled painfully on the cracked ribs. “So glad we waited on lunch,” he gasped in between spasms. “Or this would _really_ suck.”

Thomas couldn’t help the snicker. Gallows humor was Rick’s ‘process’.

They’d wound up on the wrong side of the rocks. Thomas hadn’t paid any attention to where he was going when he pulled Rick free of the board tether, just aiming for shore by any route necessary, which as far as he was concerned, worked in his favor. TC and Higgins were just now clambering over the sharp volcanic rocks that separated the swimming beach from the deadly reef and outcroppings.

Which meant no one saw how close a call it was.

After years of therapy, Thomas wasn’t exactly _ashamed_ of panic attacks – not when in hindsight he could tell himself it was understandable for anyone to have issues in the same situation, but that didn’t mean he liked it advertised.

Especially not to Higgins.

The majordomo was starting to loosen up, but she still tended to nitpick and rail on anything she considered a fault of his, and sometimes…he really just didn’t want to give her another reason for thinking he was worthless.

“Can we down play this one?” Rick asked quietly. “Maybe just tell them about the concussion, and not the almost dying part?”

The look on TC’s face was all Thomas needed to agree. TC took ‘mother hen’ to a whole new level, but he was also the first to yell about foolish and reckless behavior – whether it was an accident or not – which was just how _he_ dealt with stress. But sometimes it just came off like he was berating one of his kids for a stupid and avoidable incident.

“Sure,” Thomas agreed.

What was one more secret between them?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ta da! As always, I love to hear what you think, feel free to leave a review, a kudos, a short biography and how this affected your life, or come talk to me on Tumblr @disappearinginq! I promise I don't bite! (and you can always send a prompt for Bad Things Happen Bingo!)

**Author's Note:**

> While working on Wrong Side, I decided to do the Bad Things Happen Bingo for when I get stuck (Wrong Side is primarily action sequences, because I'm an idiot and picked a subject that I knew well, but also hate writing). Anyway. Feel free to come and play over on Tumblr! Find me @disappearinginq! And, as always, lemme know what you think!  
> Poem TC is quoting is Invictus by William Ernest Henley. 


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